Thursday, July 30, 2009

Oh yeah, cancer

It seems like a long time since I've written about Mike. I guess that's because things have just gotten kind of normal for us. A new normal where we spend hours every week in a chemo room...

Yesterday, we saw Dr. Neel, and Mike started his fourth round of chemo. This is one more round than he had the first time he did this chemo (before the big break, that lasted a couple weeks...) He's able to go this fourth round because his blood pressure is now under control. So he's been feeling pretty good, a few stomach issues here and there and some fatigue, but OK for the most part. He still takes walks with Julia, still comes to work every day, even chemo days.

So, he'll have new scans in three weeks to see where things stand. It's pretty obvious the lump in his neck is smaller. Then the plan is to continue with just one of the drugs, Avastin. I think I've written about this one before. It's the one that's not really a chemo, but it can halt tumor growth by blocking the growth of new blood vessels. I think of it sort of as a maintenance drug. He will have this every two weeks, and the good thing is that it only takes about half an hour. Which is a plus for me, since I want to spend as little time in the chemo room as possible after one of the nurses yesterday saw a picture of Julia and asked if she was my grandbaby!